Hipology

When I was younger, I didn’t know we were hippies until my freind’s in primary school started saying to me “Is your mum a hippy?” and I’d think “I don’t know !?” haha. But as I started staying with other freinds aside from my parents freinds kids, I started realising other people’s houses were different; they didn’t have different types of cutlery and colourful eclectic bits all around their houses and music playing all the time and they just smelt different.

Although at certain ages i struggled with going to the opshop with my mum all the time, i complained about the smells and I wanted what other people had, which now I look at and think how silly, but I was just a kid with feelings of wanting to fit in.

I look back at how my parents were and still are and I think their ‘hippy’ attitudes are right on target to the person I am today and the person I deep down want to be!

I don’t know if you would narrow it down to just being ‘hippy’, but that’s how I see it in its simplest light. But so much of what my parents showed me to care about was other people and nature. And they are today my two favourite interests, as you may have noticed in my art. Fun was found in music and dancing (my parents are both great movers!), playing music, books, camping, fishing and gardening. All of this was simple and didn’t revolve around money and that in itself taught me alot about how I wish to operate in my life.

Living well in my upbringing was never based on religion, but from watching my parents was more about being a kind person with compassion. I suppose it makes sense that the both of them mentioning that if they ever followed a faith, it would be Buddhism. I organically found my way there, not as my faith but as some philosophy to be inspired by in living.

And I know that it was my parents Lorne and Kevin, who by their own open mindedness and connections with people of all walks of life, has naturally encouraged me to do the same.

I’ll have to save those stories for another day, for now I sit in appreciation for all the amazing people (hippy by nature) who have shaped me and continue too.